Crunchyroll have today announced that they have acquired the global (excluding most of Asia) distribution rights to Makoto Shinkai’s next film project, and the film will be co-distributed between Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment in these regions. Details of the next film from Makoto Shinkai have yet to be revealed.
Makoto Shinkai has a history of sucessful films, with the most notable ones being Your Name, Weathering With You and Suzume. The previous film, Suzume, was released in 2023 by Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures and grossed over $300 million worldwide as well as received critical acclaim, including a Golden Globe nomination.
About Makoto Shinkai: Makoto Shinkai was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1973. In 2002 he debuted his self-produced short-film Voices of a Distant Star, which won many awards starting with the Tokyo International Anime Fair 21. In 2004 he created his first full-length movie The Place Promised in Our Early Days to great acclaim, which went on to win Best Animated Film at the 59th Mainichi Film Concours. In 2007 he released 5 Centimeters Per Second which won Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, as well as the Lancia Platinum Grand Prize at Italy’s Future Film Festival. In 2011 Children Who Chase Lost Voices was released in theaters nationwide and presented internationally as a work unlike the world had ever seen before, winning the “Golden Monkey King” Award at the 8th China International Cartoon and Animation Festival. In 2012 he received a Letter of Appreciation from the Cabinet Secretariat’s National Policy Unit as one of the “Global Messengers of Japan”. In 2013 he released, The Garden of Words, which won Best Anime Feature Film in Germany’s Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film. Also that year he was awarded the Shinmai Select Prize.
The popularity of Makoto Shinkai films isn’t just isolated in Japan, as in the UK the free-to-air TV channel Film4 broadcast Your Name and Weathering With You on TV and had them available on demand for a limited time. Both films, including other works from Makoto Shinkai, have also been released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK through distributor Anime Limited. Suzume is the latest film and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Crunchyroll.
The news of Crunchyroll acqurinig the distribution rights to Makoto Shinkai’s next film confirms that the next film will be distributed and released by Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures in the UK. Sadly, we do not have any details of what this next film will be, but at least we know who will be distributing it.
